Who Is This?

Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29; Matt. 21:1-11

March 16, 2008

Who is this? Who is this one riding into town, celebrated with waving palms and shouts of “Hosanna!”? Who is this?

That really is the question, isn’t it? That is the whole of it, for us who would call ourselves followers of this Jesus.

Who is he? Why do we care? Now, some 2,000 years after the events we’ve just read about and the ones we circle around during Holy Week each year. This morning, as we welcome new members, reaffirm our faith, promise again to be disciples.

Who is he?

Let’s stop right here, for just a moment. Set aside, if you can, the obvious fact that we are gathered together in a Christian church – a place that is part of an ancient institution that exists, at least in part, to project and protect a set of orthodox answers to this question of Jesus’ identity. Set aside, to the extent possible, those orthodox answers that we have received, and put yourself back into the gospel stories themselves. Bring with you, if you need to, a post-Easter faith in the risen Christ, but bring with you, front and center, your own experience of Jesus.

Who is he?

What names, identities, associations come to your mind when you think of Jesus?

What are the most comforting images or experiences with Jesus that come to your mind?

What are the most challenging or difficult images or experiences?

This morning – this Palm Sunday morning – I want to share a couple of my own experiences with Jesus, one comforting, one that I found quite challenging.

Those of you who know my story will not be surprised to hear that the challenge came in Pittsburgh, land that I love! However, it had nothing to do with my resignation – at least not directly.

It will help you to know that while I was in Pittsburgh I had a ponytail that went halfway down my back, and that I had a lovely beard and mustache. In this robe, I cut quite the figure. Indeed, one Sunday when one of Bud’s friends – probably a fourth-grader at the time – joined us for worship for the first time, he saw me process into the sanctuary behind the choir, turned to Cheryl and asked, “what is he, some kind of soul man?”

I have been called many things over the years, but that remains my all-time favorite! But it’s not what I want to tell you about.

What I want to tell you about happened at the very end of my time in that congregation, when I was visiting an elderly couple – Touhy and Jack – in their home. I think I had already resigned, and was saying some “thank yous” and “good-byes” to folks who had been wonderfully supportive throughout our time there.

At some point in our conversation, Touhy said to me, “you know, the first time I saw you at church, I thought there was something about you – you looked like what I imagined Jesus looked like.” She went on in that vein for a moment, and I brushed it off saying, “well, I’m certainly not Jesus.”

But the conversation stuck with me; indeed, haunted me, because it reminded me that I had fallen prey to the most common temptation – especially common to ministers – to think we can be saviors, that we can be Jesus, that we can take stone and turn it into bread, that we can have dominion over the nations, that we can cast ourselves down from a high place and neither stumble nor fall.

While those of us who are ministers of the word and sacrament may be particularly susceptible to these temptations as they arise in ecclesiastical settings, they are common among all of us. At some point in most of our lives we have occasion to believe that if everyone else would just listen to us then the world would be a better place – “work we be better if they’d just listen to me; home would be better if they’d just listen to me; church would be better if they’d just listen to me. If I had dominion, if I were king of the world, I could fix all that ails it. … If everybody would just recognize my messiahship ….”

Somewhere along the line Jesus should have requested a warning label for the gospels: “Caution: extremely dangerous. Do not attempt on your own!”

We forget the gospel call is to follow, not chart the course; to serve, not to be served; to worship, not to be worshipped. We are to be disciples, not messiahs.

It is, perhaps, comforting to consider the Palm Sunday story, and know that we are not alone. The teeming crowds gather to celebrate and shout “hosanna!” but when Jesus moves into the temple to confront the powers and principalities, the crowds disappear. When he moves to speak truth to power, they fall silent. When the moment of decision arrives, they turn quickly from the call to follow, to serve, to worship. They scatter and try to get by on their own devices.

It’s easy to be a Christian in church on a Sunday morning, to join the parade of palms, to sing “All Glory, Laud and Honor.”

But what happens when it comes time to confront the powers? What happens when our own power fails us, when we cannot get by on our own, when we are alone? What happens on Good Friday … which is to say, what happens in the everyday suffering of this world? To whom do we turn?

When Touhy Sharkey said, “I looked at you and I saw Jesus,” I heard not the praise she intended, but rather a sharp word of condemnation because I was trying to make it through a Good Friday world on my own … worse yet, I was trying to make it through on my own image that was largely created by expectations that others had cast upon me because of the role I played, the office I held, the ecclesiastical vestments that I wore.

Sisters and brothers, this is not news to you: I am no Jesus.

Indeed, as one of my favorite seminary professors liked to remind us, “reverend is a noun, not an adjective; it names the office it does not describe the office-holder.”

The robe and vestments come with the office, and do not endow the wearer with any special powers or pieties; no more than does the status of “member of the community” endow any of us with special powers or pieties.

For, you see, despite the confessional tone this morning, this is not about me. It is about Jesus; and it is about us. It is about who we say that he is; and about what that says about who we are.

So, let me share that second “Jesus experience.”

This happened just last Friday, as I was kneeling in prayer outside the Hart Senate Office Building with others from the Olive Branch Interfaith Peace Partners witness for peace. There were 42 of us there, a group of strangers, standing or kneeling in the rain, expecting the Capitol police to arrest us for making their afternoon miserable or “unlawful assembly.”

I had never been arrested in my life, and it was not a step I was taking lightly or without a fair amount of fearfulness. As we were praying together, my eyes were cast down, and looking at the wet pavement I felt cold, fearful and very much alone. The police were gathering, filming us. Other officers stood inside the building watching us through the plate glass doors and windows. I did not know what was going to happen in the next few moments or hours or days, for that matter.

But then I lifted my eyes, and saw that I was surrounded by a group of faithful folks praying for peace, and a great cloud of witnesses, and I knew that I was not alone. I was overtaken by a deep calm, and a sense that not only was I in the midst of a congregation of the faithful, but that the Christ in each one, demonstrator and police officer alike, was plain and clear to see. In a way that cannot be described except by recourse to the poetic language of the psalms,

“Out of my distress I called on the Lord; the Lord answered me and set me in a broad place.

With the Lord beside me I do not fear. …

I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation.

The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.

This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.

This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

It was not much – little at all, to be sure. No clouds parting, no sun beaming down upon us, certainly no dove descending. Indeed, no assurance that we were right in any political or strategic sense.

Nevertheless, Jesus was there, as comforting presence and assurance that the attempt to make peace, the witness to shalom, the openness to seeing the spark of the divine in every other human being, is enough for the day that the Lord has made; enough to rejoice and be glad in it – even if it ends up with you in jail.

For that effort is what we’re called to – not to be Jesus, as if we could; but to be his disciples.

For who is this one who comes riding in? He is the son of man. He is the Christ. He is the prince of peace.

And who are we? At our best, we are disciples. We are followers. We are witnesses.

We are not called to be always correct in our assertion, nor always certain in our convictions. We are not called to be always successful in our endeavors, nor always pious in our practice.

We are called to be faithful, to trust the presence of Christ, and to follow Jesus into the world.

Even as the hosannas of Palm Sunday turn to shouts of “crucify him,” we are invited into a relationship of trust with the crucified one.

It is not much to go on, to be sure. Hardly enough to stop a war or dismantle an empire. But enough for the day. First this day, then another, then the one after. Now and forever, amen.